Who is This Girl?

I will be making this post it’s own page, titled About Me. This way when this get buried under a dozen more posts people will still be able to find it. The following post is not fiction, this is my real life.

A reader recently wrote to me and said “I’ve shared your facebook and blog with several people and we’ve all asked the same question: who is she?”

When I started this project I said I would not blog about my personal life. I figured that no one really wanted to get to know me; they just wanted to read decent fiction. It’s funny; when it comes to writing about myself I usually draw a blank. I find it difficult to write a biography for any reason, mostly because I don’t really know where to begin. More so than anything, I never really believe that anyone actually wants to read it.

So, let’s start at the very beginning: I was born at 2:21 EST on September 13, 1984 in Canton, OH. I have very few memories, as most of us do, about my early childhood. I moved around a bit, but ultimately ended up at the house on 35th street where I lived from the age of three until I moved out at twenty-three. I remember the first night at the house. I can’t recall what season it was, but I remember sitting on the floor of the living room watching TV with Junket. Junket is a tattered old stuffed dog that was once my mothers. Junket was my favorite. She was tattered and falling apart from the day we met, and while her neck is without much stuffing, she is still in one piece to this day. She stands (or rather sits) watch on my dresser. One day she will belong to my daughter and hopefully survive into her adult life to be passed on and on and on.

I remember watching the pilot of Star Trek: The Next Generation when it first aired with my mother. I devolved a crush on Wesley Crusher and fell in love with Lavar Burton! Of all the things in my life, I can say without a doubt that Star Trek was the most influential. I grew to be a lover and cheerleader of Science and while I cannot possibly comprehend the kind of thought that is put into Scientific Exploration, I wish to know as much about it as possible. To this day I am constantly reading about the latest findings and wishing I could go to the moon!

I am an only child, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The world was my oyster! I didn’t have to do anything that anyone else wanted to do, or follow anyone else’s rules at play time. There was a large family that lived across the street. There were four children. The oldest girl was a classic beauty. I found that I wanted very badly to be her friend at first, but she wanted nothing to do with me. Her feelings toward me were made very clear from the beginning and as time went by I grew to hate her. It was her sister that I grew attached to. They looked nothing alike, and had I known any better I would have thought they were nothing more than acquaintances.

I could go on and on about the children of my neighborhood that I grew up with, but as time went by I learned how little they all wanted to do with me in spite of my desire to love them and be friends. All except two: Erin, the girl across from me and Nickki whose backyard connected to mine. While I no longer play with them, nor really talk to either of them, I hope these two women know what a special place they have in my heart. They were my first real friends and without them I would have very few social skills.

I began writing at an early age. Nothing I would say I was particularly proud of or even still possess. I tried to write spooky stories like the Goosebumps series and failed miserably. But my adolescent mind thought I would be as big as Stephen King by the time I graduated High School. You’ve got to dream big!

I was bullied in Elementary School which led to a lonely life at school. I had one friend in class named Alice. She looked like she could have been my sister, but as is always the case with the weird girl in class, she moved. As I grew and moved on to Middle School it combined my class with three other schools. It was the break I was hoping for and I indeed was able to expand my friend circle. My best friends to this day I met there. Just last week I watched one of them (and the last one at that) get married. I remember meeting her for the first time. She and I rode the same bus for about half a year before I up the nerve to talk to her. I asked her, “Is it just me or do you read a different book every day?”

“I read a different book every day,” she answered.

Her name is Jesy. Coleen and I met goofing around in the bathroom. She and I both have wild hair that is untamable. I have managed to learn how to keep mine under control, but if the humidity is too high you can forget about that! Coleen went to girl scouts with Lanette. Half way through the school year a new girl came to our homeroom, her name was Pam. It was decided we would ask her to sit with us at lunch. And just like that our five-some was complete. Since we are all married and some of us have children, while others of us have moved away from our home town, I can’t say I see much of them anymore. But I intend to change that.

Most of us joined choir, except for Lanette who was in band. In choir we created a clique with other choir singers and after a while I was sitting at a table full of people I loved and cared for. As is usually the case for young girls in Middle School, it wasn’t without our fair share of bullies and teasing. But as I think back on those times I have more fond memories than sad ones. Until 1998 when the bullies got the best of one of us.

Kyra Porter took her own life at the tender age of 13. We were in the 7th grade. It was a tragedy none of us were expecting. I wrote a poem for her that ended up in the school yearbook with her picture.

I seem to have very few stories of High School that I care to share at this time, with the exception of one. In my 6th grade year I switched from Choir to Drama and in the first semester of school my drama teacher Derr (there was no Miss in front of her name for obvious reasons) told me that I would do lighting “for the rest of my life.” She was right. After graduation I moved on to college where I studied theatre. Once I hit college writing took a backseat to studies.

The first three years of college I went to a local commuter campus of Kent State that was five minutes away from my parents’ home. I was able to get my Associates degree while I was there and started off my theatrical studies. I found myself playing Puck in A Midsummer Nights Dream for a time, a roll I loved and would play a thousand times over again. After two years I had taken every class I possibly could, shy of a few and needed to move on to the main campus, forty-five minutes north. After my third year of commuting, my father determined it was time for me to move out. He helped me find an apartment and took care of me until I graduated college. Then, I was on my own.

I graduated in the spring of 2008 and had a few months left on my lease. My husband, who was then simply my best male friend, had one semester left. When he graduated, the Christmas season was near at hand. We had already decided that when we graduated we would find a place in Cleveland together while his girlfriend went on to another conservatory, but as time passed we realized we were in love.

I do not wish to discuss how he went from Kent to Cleveland, but ultimately we did. Since then we have been inseparable. We work all the same places as partners in lighting and live entertainment. We were married one month ago today, June 17, 2012. We spent our honeymoon in Maui for ten days and came back feeling wonderfully refreshed. When I changed my name I determined that I would begin walking a path towards being a published author.

I started a project last November for NaNoWriMo. I wrote part one of a three part Science Fiction novel titled Kodiak Rising. You can read the first chapter here. I won last Novembers 50K word challenge and spent the rest of the year editing and cleaning up the draft to make it a real story I could be proud of. This August will be Camp NaNoWriMo, wherein I plan on writing the second part to my novel and I am slating this coming November for the third and final installment.

One thing NaNoWriMo has taught me is that I enjoy the process of just writing without editing. I have been approaching this blog in much the same spirit as NaNo. I just go for it. I don’t self-edit and when I run out of steam, I spell check and post. Originally I only wanted to post once a week so I would have some time to really think on what I was putting out there, but trying to do this once a day keeps me writing. I have to make up for lost time. I hadn’t written in almost five years unless it was a term paper or some essay and now it’s time to write for me!